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My friend and I are planning to make a video game (like Slender) where the character is stuck in a building, when lightning strikes, and the lights go out and your objective is to find the back-up generators and turn the lights back on. The game will be pretty small.map
We are now wondering whether we should use Unity or XNA to build it. I have no experience in either, and I will mostly be writing in C# (which both have that capability). My friend will be drawing the images, and we want to import the images into the game. Which software should we use? What are the pros and cons of each? Thanks in advance.

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Do you have a target medium (xbox, phone, pc)? This could help determine your choice. – ChargingPun Aug 20 '12 at 17:46
@Ben I am targeting PC – Outlaw Lemur Aug 20 '12 at 17:47
Isn't XNA specifically geared towards Xbox360 and Windows Phone7 games? – ChargingPun Aug 20 '12 at 17:54
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Have a look at MonoGame. The 3D support is very usable, code-compatible with XNA, and it hasn't been silently killed by Microsoft. – David Lively Aug 20 '12 at 18:16
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Which technology to use questions are not constructive and considered off topic for the site. See the FAQ to see what kinds of questions to ask here. – Byte56 Aug 20 '12 at 18:44
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closed as not constructive by Kylotan, Byte56, John McDonald, bummzack, Gajoo Aug 20 '12 at 20:12

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1 Answer

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If that is your first project, use Unity. It is easy to learn and will get your project done much faster.

Compared to Unity, XNA is little more than a managed wrapper for DirectX. With XNA you have to do everything yourself, what Unity already implements seamlessly, there are of course libraries for almost everything specifically targeting XNA, but integrating that together is not always easy.

For a complete list see the Unity webpage, but some things you would have to implement from scratch or find libraries for:

  • Rendering, especially animations and lightning
  • Physics
  • Editor
  • Scripting
  • Serialization
  • Camera system
  • Path finding

Unity also has a big and organized asset store with many free plugins available, that cover a lot of frequent requirements like AI or procedural content generation.

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+1 for lighting. Since it seems that's a core mechanic and not trivial to implement. – E-Man Aug 20 '12 at 18:33

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